


ghosted

by plingo_kat



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben Hargreeves' Tentacles | Bentacles, Ghost Sex, Knives, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 06:11:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18424506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plingo_kat/pseuds/plingo_kat
Summary: “This is not a good idea,” Diego says. Ben glows faintly blue next to him, which is fucking terrible for stealth. It’d be a dick move to point that out though.





	ghosted

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, kliego discord, for throwing Ben/Diego ideas at me until I wrote this feverishly during work hours. I've handwaved emotional trauma, tentacle metaphysics, apocalypse explanations, and basically everything that isn't related to the smut scenario because I'm the author and I can do that. So there.

“This is not a good idea,” Diego says. Ben glows faintly blue next to him, which is fucking terrible for stealth. It’d be a dick move to point that out though.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Klaus says airily. “It’s perfect. I’ll be lookout, you two go do... stuff.”

Diego looks at Ben, who can normally be relied upon to be at least marginally more reasonable than Klaus, but he sports a grin that spans the whole lower half of his face. He’s having a blast.

They’re running out of time, and it’s clearly a waste of effort to argue. Diego sighs. “On my mark, then. Three, two, one--”

Both Diego and Ben sprint out from cover. They make it halfway across the dock before they’re spotted, and Diego throws his first knife. One guy falls into the water.

“Try not to kill everybody,” Diego says, palming the next knife. “I want to question them.”

“Sure,” Ben says cheerfully. “No problem.”

There’s some shouting and a bullet pings off the concrete to the left of Diego’s foot. It’s closer than normal at this distance.

“Uh, you mind--”

“I’m going, I’m going.” Ben separates from Diego to flank the three new guys who showed up out of a side door, and Diego breathes a sigh of relief as the glow follows him. The next bullet misses again, at a wider margin.

He gets two more guys before he’s within fist-fighting distance. With this many people he doesn’t want to take chances so he’s liberal with the stabbing, especially of gun hands. Out of the corner of his eyes he sees a blue tentacle throw a dude into the side of the building.

“Alive!” he yells. Ben’s control is way better dead than it was when he was still breathing, but that doesn’t mean Diego doesn’t remember exactly how strong those tentacles are. A man lunges for one of the guns on the floor and Diego throws another knife. He’s down to three. Two more go toward disabling other guns, and then he’s just got the one.

“Heads up!” Ben shouts, and a tentacle _throws one of his own knives at him_. Diego snatches it out of the air by reflex and nearly gets punched in the face for his trouble. He clocks the guy in the temple and he goes down.

“What the fuck,” he says, accidentally catching the eye of the last guy standing. The guy raises his hands, shaking his head, and starts to back away. A blue tentacle snakes around his neck and he claws at it in terror until he passes out.

“Brutal,” Diego says with no small amount of appreciation. Ben drifts up next to him and offers... _all_ of his knives back, one in his hand and four via tentacles. They hang in front of Diego’s face like particularly lethal Christmas ornaments.

“Uh,” he says, and takes the knife from Ben’s hand. It’s cold. The tentacles drift closer.

 _“Uh,”_ he says, and steps backward. Ben laughs next to him, softly, and one of the tentacles drapes over his shoulder. The knife catches in Diego’s pullover and shreds diagonally across his chest.

“Hey!” Ben _has_ to have done that on purpose; the blade didn’t even leave a scratch. Which is good, because it’s still covered in somebody else’s blood.

“You look hot,” Ben says, all innocence. “I’m just helping you cool down.” He must have picked up a lot of things from Klaus over the years, Diego thinks uncharitably. The tentacle coils over the rip and pushes it wider, icy along Diego’s skin. He snatches the knife before Ben gets any more bright ideas.

As he moves, the large suckers on the tentacles catch and stick. It’s like rings of ice on his pec, his sternum, the swell of muscle at his shoulder and neck. He twitches and shudders.

“Can you not?”

A tentacle the circumference of his thigh circles around his waist. He jerks and the knife held by another tentacle rips his shirt at the stomach, which tears wider as Ben tightens his hold. Diego whacks the tentacle right below where it’s holding the knife and metal clatters to the floor.

“You’re really going to do this here?”

“Yeah.” Ben looks apologetic but his tone is anything but. “Sorry.”

“You aren’t sorry,” Diego mutters. A sucker attaches itself to the skin below his belly button and he yelps. “Fuck, that’s cold!”

“Klaus hasn’t really worked that out yet.” Ben shrugs. “Tell me if it gets too much and I’ll stop.”

“Um,” Diego says. He should definitely tell Ben to stop. He should tell him to stop _right now_ , because they are surrounded by unconscious (or dead) goons and their brother, and also they’re out in the open, but instead he tilts his head back and grabs another knife from a nearby tentacle.

“Yeah,” Ben grins the same grin from before they charged a bundle of armed men. “That’s what I thought.”

“You became such an asshole after you died,” Diego says. Ben undoes his belt and a tentacle pulls up his shirt in the back, suckers latching on all along his spine. He bites his lip on a gasp.

“You were saying?” Ben hums, and Diego leans forward to see if his mouth is as cold as his monsters.

“Oh,” Ben sighs, and it’s weird because the air doesn’t move. He radiates cold like the ice pops they used to sneak as kids when Reginald wasn’t looking, and Diego kisses him and kisses him until his mouth goes numb. Another tentacle wriggles its way into his pants and he physically jumps.

Ben pulls him back in. The tentacle around his waist lifts him off his feet and he doesn’t swallow the groan fast enough, closes his eyes to the sound of Ben’s chuckle in his ears.

“Hurry up,” he mumbles, and the tentacles _flex_ so every point where the suckers anchored on his skin pull and pinch. “Hhn-!”

“Pretty,” Ben whispers, and bites the next shameful little whimper from Diego’s mouth. His fingers close around Diego’s cock and they’re _freezing_ , clutched tight over his shaft and rubbing over the head, too much sensation. His feet kick and he arches, ineffectual in the tentacles’ embrace.

“Does it hurt,” Ben murmurs, and Diego whines through gritted teeth. It does, it really does, but a good kind of a hurt, the kind where you almost want to press harder on a bruise to see how much more you can take, how much before it’s too much to handle. Like touching ice so cold it burns.

Ben’s other hand winds in his hair. Pulls his spine into a tighter arch, exposes his throat to Ben’s teeth. His eyes fly open and they catch on a stray tentacle hovering next to his cheek, visible at the corner of his eye -- it holds his last knife. He can’t feel his tongue, can’t get the words out of his mouth as it drifts closer, just gives another urgent gasp. Ben hums and strips him faster.

He comes when the knife scores a line across his cheek, just missing his eye. The suckers latched on all around his body all contract at once, matching the rhythm of Diego’s hips and Ben’s mouth on his throat, and this time he finds his voice. Christ, but the soft wavering wail that escapes is embarrassing. He hopes Klaus doesn’t hear.

Ben lets him down. Diego braces a hand on his shoulder as his knees wobble.

“I-I-” he closes his mouth and swallows. Tries again. “What about you?”

Between one blink and the next, the tentacles disappear. Ben shakes his head, rueful.

“Haven’t figured out how to be corporeal enough to get it up,” he says. “We’re working on it.”

“Oh.” Diego blinks. Ben gestures at his fly and Diego looks down at his spent cock, red and raw from the cold. He tucks himself away gingerly.

There’s nothing to do about his shirt.

“Did you have to?” he says, plucking at the remaining shreds. The night air is actually warmer than the leftover chill from Ben’s tentacles, and he shivers as his skin warms up enough to once again register his nipple ring. God, it’s hard enough to cut glass. “I’m freezing.”

“You weren’t complaining,” Ben says, but it sounds like he’s talking from down a tunnel. Diego turns to look at him with a frown; he’s starting to fade, the blue glow dimming. He offers a smile and one more kiss brushed over Diego’s swollen mouth that tingles like mint. Then he disappears.

“Asshole,” Diego says to the air. “You’re going to make me deal with this,” he gestures at everything around him, “alone?”

Silence. Then Klaus calls his name, and he realizes that he’s got much bigger things to worry about.

“What happened to _you_?” Klaus says when he spots him.

“Don’t ask,” Diego says. And because he knows Ben is laughing, “Ben, you just shut up.”

“Ohh,” Klaus says. “I sense a story.”

“No,” Diego says definitively. “You don’t.”

“Oh yes,” Klaus says. “I definitely do.”

Diego groans. He’s never taking backup with him again.

**Author's Note:**

> plingokat @ twitter


End file.
